


Shooting Star

by sirmapleleaf



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Kansas, Steven and Pearl both need therapy, Surrealism, hopeless dreamers, i have crippling ADHD, maybe if i write fanfiction i'll actually finish a story, travelling, very chaotic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23325988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirmapleleaf/pseuds/sirmapleleaf
Summary: Steven, after the events of Mr. Universe, began to doubt the efficacy of his upbringing. Spurred by a reckless fever dream, he escapes secretly in the night, convincing a recently-hopeless Connie to come along with him on his quest to kick-start a music career in Kansas City. Meanwhile, startled by his sudden disappearance, the Crystal Gems and Greg attempt to track him down, all the while Pearl starts to question whether or not she has really been a positive influence on Steven after all.Will the Child achieve fame and success? Will the endlessly marauding droves of the subconscious prevent us all from ever achieving true self-actualization? Or perhaps flights of fancy are what gives life meaning...? Only one way to find out, I suppose...cw// mention of suicide (will update as the fic continues)
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe, Mystery Girl/Pearl (Steven Universe)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. An Evening Deserved

“Is that all, miss?”

“I believe that’s alright for now—I’m just waiting for someone.” Pearl sat, contorted with a sense of etiquette, on a fine oak dining chair. The sun still hung above the west, but blinds in the newly-opened restaurant were drawn, and candles lit, to create a romantic ambiance fit only for the most bourgeois bachelor(ette)s of Beach City. The air was comforting but musky. Ancient smells drifted up from under the carpet, their origins dating back to when ‘Le Rongeur Arctique’ was an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town—and before that, a bowling alley, whose depressingly _impuissant_ pinsetter sent impatient little ones into fits of rage rivaled only by Napoléon.

Pearl’s face lit up as she saw Sheena, a pink-haired lady she had met some years back on her way to an outdoor concert, finally enter the establishment. Superficial resemblances aside, her confidence in Sheena’s respectable personality was unwavering, and she could not deny that she felt a tinge of shame for having waited so long to schedule a date with her. However, despite Pearl’s excitement, Sheena’s wild collage of punk-rock clothing stood out in this formal environment, causing some embarrassment.

Pearl smiled, “Non chapeau, madame?” Sheena laughed softly, then sighed and turned away. “Yeah, I don’t know what that means.”

“Oh, well,” Pearl covered her mouth and snickered, “I probably didn’t say it right anyway. It’s been a long time. So, did you make it here okay?”

She put her tattered coat on the back of her seat. “I mean, I only had to walk like 15 minutes, there’s not much that could’ve happened to me.” She sat, legs subtly crossed, one arm leaning off to the side. “Oh… You ordered wine for me!” There was tenseness in her smile.

“Yes, I did! I remembered you texting me about how you loved this specific red, so I asked the owner if they could have it ordered especially for this occasion! Well, they went above and beyond. This is the _presidente’s_ edition. It’s been aged ten years in a mahogany barrel, suspended by platinum wire over an Amazonian waterfall, whose overhang boasts an authentic Tupi oca supported entirely by two beams of—”

“Wow! How generous! Thank you so much! Gosh, when did I even send that text, like a year ago? What an amazing memory! That sounds so… Expensive.”

“Only the best! I didn’t fight a 4,000-year war to serve my date house wine."

Sheena looked down, and an air of suspense filled the gap between them. She scratched her neck. “So… Believe it or not, Pearl, I’m actually a bit of an old-fashioned gal.”

“Oh?” Pearl raised her eyebrows.

“Only in some ways! Just... In some ways. Like, uh… Well, I’ve gone all quiet now because you’re so sweet, dammit.” Pearl’s expression slowly drained of joy.

“But, when I say I’m old-fashioned I mean that, I don’t like to say things on the phone that should be said in person, y’know? So, like…” She took a deep breath and, with struggle, looked Pearl directly in the eyes. “I have a girlfriend, Pearl. As of about 3 weeks ago.”

“…What?! Why would you come here then? I said _date_ , d-a-t-e? I thought all humans knew what—”

“I know what a date is, Pearl. I came to tell you that, thank you for being interested, and you’re a really sweet girl, but you asked a little too late, I’m sorry. And I’m paying for dinner by the way—even the crazy Amazonian wine, I guess…”

“But—”

“What was I supposed to say, ‘no, I’m taken, get lost’? We’ve been friends for over two years Pearl, I’d never do you dirty like that. I’m flattered, though. And, there are plenty of fish in the sea, you old seagull, you… Heh… Right?”

Pearl was staring down, twiddling her thumbs.

“Bird mom? Oh, come on, surely you remember bird mom.”

“So,” Pearl began softly, “this is my fault then?”

“Fault? Whose fault? No one’s fault. It’s just—a little mix-up! Or, uh, mistake. It happens.”

Sheena looked at Pearl with concern, until suddenly the latter sprung up from her seat with unnerving joviality. “Well, nice seeing you then! Sorry to bother you and make you walk all this way. What’s your girlfriend’s name by the way?”

“What?”

“Haha, never mind! Sorry, just slipped out. I don’t know why I even cared, to be honest with you.”

“Pearl…”

“Oh, and,” Pearl hastily produced a large bundle of cash from the fancy overcoat she was putting on. “Here’s enough to pay for the wine. Sorry for bothering you again!”

“I still want to eat. Can’t we just talk?”

But Pearl was already headed fast out the door, chin nuzzled in the material comfort of Cashmere.

Sheena stood for a moment, then sat back down and sighed.

“Your check, madame?”

“Keep the change, garcon—I think I’ve just had a minor revelation.”

“…Madame, if that is anything like a revolution, I must decline.”

Pearl spent the rest of that evening walking about the town and, eventually making her way to the top of a hill, sat and stared out upon the sunset, whose metaphorical rebirth she knew would bring her no comfort in this world of inescapable cycles.


	2. Wings of the Seraphim

There was a subtle shift, then—atop the bed where Steven used to spend his time sleeping peacefully, eating, reading, and all the other healthy things that keep a boy strong and growing. But today, as he stirred about in the very early morning, writhing, tight in the throes of a nightmare, that childhood innocence seemed as far away from him as lucidity.

And on the hard floor there was a thud, as he squirmed and catapulted himself from the bed and into wakefulness—breathing hard, eyes darting left to right, still expecting the monster to be waiting for him. In days long past, this hypnagogic paranoia would fade as quickly as it had arrived—but as he became evermore used to prolonged bouts of terror, a certain nostalgia washed over him. It was nostalgia for a time when he believed the monster of his nightmares could ever truly fade…

So he learned to live with the monster: he made coffee with the growling just behind his ears, brushed his teeth while the horrid creature’s reflection stared him dead in the eyes, and all the while had to pretend he was not stalked, incessantly, every day by a demon that could never be made to love. The nightmares used to end, but now, a nightmare was a just a reprise of the daily struggle—no difference between light and dark, night and day. All horrors crept around every waking corner.

Ever since spending the day looking at his grandparents’ house with Greg, Steven had become particularly distrustful of his guardians. He remembered all the times he was irresponsibly left in charge of a task far too important for his fragile soul to bear. Each time he recalled a new incident, his desire to make some sort of brash move grew stronger. The pain from his upbringing could easily turn into anger at any moment, and while he resented this, his spirit had become far too weak to resist it.

It was about 9:30 AM when Pearl walked through the door, looking a bit tattered.

“Hey, how’d the date go? Have you been gone since last night?”

“Oh, it went very well! She showed up perfectly on time, and then very graciously informed me that she already has a girlfriend and she does not want to be in that sort of relationship with me.”

“Oh, that… Doesn’t sound that good, actually.”

Steven felt a tinge of concern as he leaned against the counter, sipping his dark roast. Her behavior reminded him of when she used to hide her feelings from everyone—emotional episodes that caused him as much pain as they did her.

“Are you… Alright?”

“Oh, Steven,” she laughed a little too hard, “I’ve been through much worse than this, I assure you.”

He took a sip without looking away. “So, you’re not alright.”

“I am _very_ alright,” she insisted, as she took off her coat and bounded off into the temple.

Steven turned to face the warp pad a few seconds too late. “Wait, what were you doing all night?” However, Pearl had already vanished behind the door to her room.

“…Bye then.”

It was hard for him to be the adult in a family whose every piece was damaged—it always _was_ hard for him. But after the empire was toppled, he figured the puzzle had at last been somewhat glued together, and just in time too, considering his now-deteriorating mental health. If Pearl fell back into her old ways… How could he deal with that? Perhaps with the aid of innocence it was conceivable, but now, as the last drops of fluid exited the bag, the Steven life support system wouldn’t last much longer.

Steven finished his coffee. 9:43 AM: he reached for his phone and dialed.

“Hey… Connie?”

\---

It was exactly the kind of thing she had feared her entire life. No, not death—at least in death the suffering is brief. Connie sat up in bed, hyperventilating, going through her mind in a whir of anxious concentration, trying to figure out how on earth she’d been expelled from school.

“Well,” her mother demanded, “any ‘misunderstandings’ yet?!”

“Mom, please! I don’t know how this happened! I’m so sorry!” She could barely speak without coughing up a storm, her voice weak and cluttered, tears obstructing her view.

“Well let’s see, I’ve got the letter from school right here, so don’t give me that ‘I don’t know what happened’ stuff, young lady.” Mrs. Maheswaran cleared her throat in preparation to read from a school-issued notice of expulsion.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Maheswaren,

your child has been discovered with a weapon on school grounds. She left it inside of her backpack after the final bell, leaning against the wall of our hideously filthy cafeteria. The weapon appears to be a large, fully functional broadsword. Our faculty members examined the object and have determined that it is extremely dangerous, easily tearing one (1) _Horatio the Clown_ toupee (previously used as a prop in our theatrical production of _1994: The ‘Radical’ State_ ) asunder, even when wielded by our comparatively ineffectual swordsman, Danial, the beloved but cartoonishly bumbling Physics teacher from building B. It is with a heavy heart that we must inform you of your daughter’s imminent expulsion from our school. Carrying dangerous weapons on school ground is strictly prohibited, and we will not waive this fundamental restriction, even if the offender is smarter than a lot of our incompetent teachers.

Yours truly,

Principle Roy.

Mr. Maheswaren looked away sheepishly. “Jeez, Principle Roy seems to have a lot of passive-aggressive contempt.”

“So, Connie,” her mother began, “care to explain yourself?”

“I have no idea how this could’ve happened! I would never bring a sword to school, you know that!”

“Well apparently you did.”

Suddenly, Connie had a moment of realization. “The backpack! I must’ve brought my old backpack by mistake!”

“You carry a sword in your backpack?! I don’t understand how this is helping your case.”

“It was safer that way! At least, it was a long time ago… I must’ve just left it in there. I-I thought you said you were okay with me having my sword!”  
  
“Not when you bring it to school and get expelled! Now how in the world are you going to get into college?”

Somehow, this thought had not even entered her cortisol-raddled mind until her mother spelled it out for her. What Vine League school would ever accept an applicant who was previously expelled for a serious weapon possession offense? She could almost see her dreams fall before her.

Connie did her best to compose herself. “No, listen, mom, this is all just a big mistake. I’ll just go to the school and talk to Principle Roy, explain that this was just a huge misunderstanding, and this’ll all be sorted out. Okay?”

“I dearly hope that’s the case—for your sake.”

\---

“And they just expelled you without warning?!” Steven could hear the muffled cries of his best friend, who lately had become something between a platonic and romantic partner, through the phone. He was glad everything was back to normal after his disastrous proposal, though he still felt embarrassed about it every now and then.

“Okay, okay, just… Just come here and we can talk about it more, okay? I’ll—I’ll help you talk to this Roy guy tomorrow… Okay… Alright sounds good… See you soon… Bye.”

He breathed a deep sigh as he hung up the phone. It seems the two Universes—Fate and Steven—were pitted in a mystical feud: Fate begets sorrow, and Steven cleans up, in a seemingly-endless cycle of creation and destruction that would make even the most seasoned daoshi blush.

“Oh yeah, great, even _more_ problems I have to deal with. Does it ever stop?”

\---

“Pearl, these feelings are coming from a place of anxiety. You are upset. Please wait until you’re able to think rationally again before you make any decisions.” Garnet’s trademark stoicism was always a comfort.

“It’s just that—I’ve spent so much time trying to separate myself from Rose… What if I don’t even like who I’ve become?”

“These things happen. You’re a valuable member of the Crystal Gems, and you inspire me.”

“Who even are the Crystal Gems now? Just… An old bodyguard far past her retirement, protecting no one from nothing.”

“Pearl, we’re family. I thought you’d gotten over this nonsense.”

“It’s not enough that I am myself—I need to _love_ myself, too. But sometimes I…” She looked down pensively. “I wonder how much there really is to love.”

\---

After a seemingly endless amount of anxious waiting, Connie finally arrived, looking distraught and casting a longing gaze out to the horizon. Steven took a deep breath, stepped quietly out onto the balcony, and put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. She didn’t look at him.

He tapped her shoulder, causing her to finally reveal her teary eyes.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, and she nodded.

The sky turned mauve as they walked barefoot along the shore. Stars began to glow, and beams of light cascaded down from some unlimited source far above the Earth, as they twisted down into further spiralling boundaries of sea and sand, the air suffocating but warm.

So, at last, she found herself falling, with nothing to catch her but Steven. All fail-safes hitherto created had been bypassed—were all her studies, deadlines, and books simply barriers built to keep her safe from this exact moment? Now she looked in Steven’s eyes and held no shields between them—an uninhibited exchange of empathy, something which she had been running from for years without knowing. Because, the really scary thing, is that this feeling’s one you don’t get to run away from so easily. Her parents didn’t understand her, and she could never be comfortable enough around her new friends to open up to them in ways she wanted to. So, it seemed, then, that when everything falls apart, Steven is the only source of comfort she truly has. To put all your eggs in such a precarious basket could surely end only in misery.

“Wow… Do you see that? Those two dots… Floating up and away together.”

The white spheres spun and climbed through the clouds, emitting soothing hums, disappearing behind the sky in a wash of blurry light.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” But Connie could not breathe. The world turned and nausea overcame her.


	3. The Oracle Said Wander

“I know you  
I care too  
I see through  
All of the pictures that you keep on the wall  
All of the people that will come to the ball  
But hear me calling  
Won't you give me  
A free ride.”

-Nick Drake, _Free Ride_

Steven spun around and saw an entranceway behind the castle, green and spewing light into great mechanical veins like a neon heart. Passing into it, his perspective shifting to third-person, he viewed the following events as though detached from his own body.

“Keep them up high on the beams, now, I don’t wanna see any variance in the—” the circus ringmistress stopped as she noticed Steven behind her. Lights behind the thin velveteen curtains drawn around the sandpit shimmered dully, sometimes cutting through spacetime and reconfiguring themselves as cartoonish pedals which danced above the curtains and vanished back behind them as soon as they appeared—a rippling effect similar to raindrops on water.

“Well, what are you doing here young man? Here for the show?”

Steven gulped. “I don’t know why I’m here, actually. I was just passing through. I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, no, there’s no need for that—we always welcome new guests.”

She directed him into a stool and, producing a pen and clipboard from her coat, began asking him questions.

“So, any experience performing in the circus before?”

“No, never.”

“Any desire to perform circus acts with our travelling circus?”

“No.”

“Any hesitation about the mortal dangers inherent to the job?”

“Uh… Yes?”

She ripped from the clipboard the piece of paper she had been writing on. “Hm, hm, yes. Just tallying up your score, darling.”

“I really would just, rather leave… If you don’t mind—”

She put her finger over Steven’s mouth, staring him down like a tiger might intimidate its prey.

“Shh… This is none of your concern, my sweet little thing. Guess what?”

Steven’s voice began to tremble, his body becoming increasingly incorporeal. “Um… What?”

She smiled wide as a valley. “Perfect score.”

Suddenly, a group of men in flashing jumpsuits grabbed Steven from behind, each one holding a separate limb as they pushed him onto the sandy floor.

Steven struggled against them. “Please, stop! I don’t know why I’m here!” The strobing of their uniforms almost blinded him in a cacophony of visual snow. He found himself drowning in the light, smothered in a crib he had only just been born into.

But just as the men were about to force him into a jumpsuit of his own, his true, detached self, began floating above the scene. High above the chaos, a serenity overcame him—an intense ecstasy of being that he had never known. He watched as his double was beaten, thrown about, allowed to escape but captured again by the hem of his shirt, all the while crying hysterically in terror, yet he felt nothing. Instead, there was only absolute peace and comfort, as the colours swirled around him and flashed at a speed he couldn’t believe. It was at this moment that a great, thunderous roar of horns sounded from above him. As the sound waves travelled down, he could see the horrible scene beneath him separate into tiny pieces—dismantled and washed away into the hazy depths of consciousness.

He turned upwards and saw himself once more, but this time, his double was free and happy, triumphantly commanding an orchestra above his head.

“How can I ever thank you?” he asked.

“Love yourself,” the double replied, “love yourself.”

\---

Now the air was clear and the sun had risen. Connie didn’t get much sleep, far too anxious about her upcoming trip to school. Though she rushed like a devil through her quiet home, getting dressed, sorting papers and emails, by the time she was ready to leave she noticed it would still be another two hours before the time Steven had agreed to meet her. So, she stared at the floor, lost in daydreams built to distract from the true enemies of the day.

Upon reaching their meeting spot, located just behind the Big Donut, she noticed Steven was acting uncharacteristically reclusive.

“And, oh, here’s the _really_ big one,” she said, showing Steven a document which explained, in great detail, her reasons for accidentally carrying a sword on school grounds. “I’d be surprised if even a stickler like Roy denied this bulletproof evidence. I mean, what’s he gonna say, ‘you’re not allowed to save the entire planet’?”

Steven nodded timidly. “Mm.”

“So, do you think this’ll work?”

He didn’t look up from the ground. “Maybe.”

Though concerned for his well-being, she didn’t have the energy to ask him what was wrong—after all, she was close to a breakdown of her own. But after getting into Steven’s car, she found she didn’t even need to ask.

“I’m not coming back home after this, by the way,” he said grimly.

“Oh… Where are you going?”

“I’m just leaving.”

She swallowed. “Like, for a night drive?”

Steven pulled out of the parking lot. “If something was holding down a baby tree, and not letting it grow, would you move it?”

“You’re starting to worry me now.”

“I realized last night that I’ve never had a chance to breathe my entire life. And you absolutely can be smothered by too much love—too much love coming from all the wrong places.” His hands trembled on the wheel, causing the car to swerve slightly in the road. “It’s not that I hate them or anything—”

“Hate who?”

“The Crystal Gems! My dad! All they ever do is try to help me but, they’re terrible at it! And I know if I left they’d be worried sick and want me back but, I just can’t have them around right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back, honestly.”

“Can you at least tell them you’re—”

“I don’t want them to know where I am. I don’t want any cards, phone calls, nothing. Everything they do now just reminds me of how bad it used to be. I can’t go back to that—ever.”

A tense silence fell over them as Steven turned onto the road leading out of Beach City.

“Look, I’m sure I’ll be back some day I just… I don’t know.”

He took a deep breath. “I need to love myself right now.”

Connie cleared her throat. “Well, loving yourself is definitely good, but…”

“Will you come with me?”

“What?!”

“Connie, you’re the only person who’s never made my life miserable!”

“That’s not true! What about Amethyst? What about the proposal?”

“The proposal was my fault, not yours. And Amethyst tries hard, maybe even harder than Pearl and Garnet, but… She’s never really fixed anything.”

“You can’t expect her to fix an entire life’s worth of—”

“I know! I don’t expect her to do anything, I just need to leave—I need to leave it all. Don’t you know I feel terrible about this?”

“Steven, I’m so sorry but, you can’t expect me to—”

“I know!” he shot back. He paused a moment, then pulled over and leaned back in his seat. “I know… Let’s just… Get this school thing over with.”

“Oh, and also,” he reached back and handed her a folded piece of paper, “that’s my new phone number, if you ever wanna call. But please, don’t tell anyone where I am, if I happen to mention it.”

Though the intensity of her disapproval was almost tactile in the humid backseat of the car, she realized there wasn’t much she could say. Passing farms and patches of white oak forest, the remainder of the drive was like being inside the sharp end of a needle, pushing through the flesh of an unhappy patient, delivering their regrettable package.

\---

Pearl’s been staying out late—of that, everyone was certain—but what no one knew was what, exactly, she had been doing with that time. This was deliberate: if asked, she would typically pretend she had not heard, or simply give a half-answer and change the subject. But here, out in the desolate cornfields near The Chesapeake Bay, Pearl donned a black beanie, and stepped off the red bike she found abandoned at a high school several months ago near Beach City.

Lugging the massive 400 lb. solid block of wood along with her for nearly 50 miles using only a bike that resembled scrap more than it did transportation was a feat accomplished only thanks to her superhuman strength. Being inconspicuous, however, was nearly impossible. Sometimes people would step out onto the balconies of their quiet farmhouses, awoken suddenly in the night by the sound of heavy wood skidding violently against the seldom-ridden roads of rural Delmarva. These _audiences_ , occasionally, would even follow her for a few miles, either in vehicles or on foot, fueled by an insatiable curiosity to figure out what on earth the crazy bike lady was doing. Every time, though, they gave up pursuit before she reached her destination. Well, every time except this time, that is.

Pearl turned, startled by the sounds of rustling crop behind her. She squeaked when she saw two small children standing not 3 ft. away from her.

“What are you two doing out here?” Pearl said in a whisper that was still somehow intimidating, “Don’t you know what time it is?”

“Uhm, actually miss, I think, uh, we were gonna ask, um… We were gonna ask you! Uh…” The child became lost in thought and was subsequently nudged by the other.

“We were gonna ask her what she’s doing!”

“Um…” The first one looked up timidly at Pearl. “We were gonna ask you what she’s doing!”

Her sister put her head in her hands. “Oh, crickets. Come on! What _she_ is doing! So, if you’re talking to _her_ , you say…?”

“…Miss?”

“ _You_!”

Pearl stared at the twins in confusion. “I think you two might be lost. Please contact the nearest human and alert them of your predicament. I have work to do.”

“Wait, wait!” but Pearl was already headed in the other direction, ever deeper into the field.

“Aw gee sis, I really messed that one up didn’t I?”

“It’s okay, you were just born a doofus—you can’t help it.”

“Aw that’s—that’s really very mean, actually. You know, mom always says I’m her favourite so, I don’t think that’s true, actually.”

“She’s a doofus too.”

“Mama?! She’s smart enough to feed your lazy butt you know, that’s for dang sure at the _very_ least!”

Just as a slapping fight began, Pearl stormed back into the small clearing, whisper-shouting like a sleepy director giving stage directions.

“I know you two might not understand why this is so important to me, but this is the only time I get to be myself, and I can’t be myself with all this ludicrous nonsense going on! I bet they can hear you two bickering all the way in the Western Shore! I’m very sorry for being so harsh but you simply must put an end to this!”

Emily, the sister who largely prides herself on her lack of doofus-ness, stepped forward to explain the situation, first with a courteous bow.

“Ma’am, I’m so sorry we’ve disturbed you, but, I was just reading a book on quantum physics—you know, as 10-year-olds do, of course—and I couldn’t help but notice you riding by our house with a massive block of wood behind you?! And, well, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but doing such a thing makes a mad racket, and you woke up my sister and, well, you see, she absolutely _needs_ a bedtime story to get her sorry ass back to bed—”

“Emily!”

“Mama’s not around! Don’t tell her I said that and I won’t flick your ears all day tomorrow when you’re not expecting it.”

“I’m telling!”

“Did I say tomorrow? I actually meant forever.”

“No!”

“Yes! Don’t tell!”

“Look!” Pearl demanded, “you two are obviously not supposed to be here right now, and I don’t want to deal with you. Please find your parents and kindly get lost—preferably in the reverse order.”

But why _was_ Pearl here, anyway?

It started several years ago. She was taking a few days of alone time up in Empire City, when one day she happened upon a public botanical garden, sitting candidly upon the roof of an unassuming apartment complex in Kings, down on the western end of Wide Island. As she climbed, the stairs opened up to the roof, revealing at once a pristine neo-futurist greenhouse which completely surrounded her.

“Here for the garden, I presume?” asked a man sitting near a table full of roses, wearing jeans, t-shirt, and a baseball cap.

“What’s that you’re making?” Pearl asked, pointing at the beautifully intricate design the man appeared to be tending to.

He laughed softly. “I can’t say anyone’s ever been so interested.” He patted his hand on the marble floor. “Sorry about the coffee on the floor. Come, sit.”

She sat and looked at him, avoiding the flowers as best she could.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Pearl.”

“Tell me Pearl, have you ever heard of a mandala before?”

\---

“Quit it!” Emily shrieked, causing Pearl at last to propose a compromise.

“Okay, if you two need to know what I’m doing _that_ badly, I’ll tell you, alright?”

“Yes please, you know, we only want to know… And stuff.”

“I’m using that wooden block you saw to flatten these crops—to make a crop circle.”

“Whoa! Like an alien!”

“Precisely.”

“Can we watch?!”

Pearl sighs. “Fine…”

So Pearl spent the next few hours meticulously carving out shapes in the ground: petals, stems, thorns, chevrons, halos, all the while being followed by the two munchkins far too stubborn (each in their own ways) to realize what a horrible idea it was for them to stay here. Until, finally, at around 4 AM, the project was complete. The twins, having spent most of the time bickering and tripping over corn, didn’t have much of an idea what the design was—but Pearl knew that it was a rather abstract depiction of a rose: surrounded by holy light, dignified, and pure.

“Okay,” she began, her voice now having less aggression and taking on a more sombre quality, “ _this_ is the part where I must insist you two leave at once.” She turned around once she was sure they were gone.

\---

“It’s all sand?”

The man nodded. “Yes, all sand—placed one grain at a time, no less.”

They were talking about the design in front of them. It looked something like the inside of a holy clock—myriad distinct sections which, despite being motionless, somehow appeared to three-dimensionally interact with all the others, and eventually spiralled down into the mandala’s centre, the entire thing reaching a level of complexity that seemed, to Pearl, well beyond the capabilities of a single human mind to construct.

“It took about two weeks to make this one. Me and a few others come up here every so often to work on it—it’s not really a formal ceremony or anything.” He smiled. “You came just in time, too. In a few hours I was planning on dismantling it.”

“You’d just destroy this thing you worked so hard on?”

“ _We_ worked so hard on, yes. Tell me Pearl, you seem like a well-lived individual: has anything you’ve loved ever stayed forever?”

Her face froze slightly, turning away.

“I don’t even have to ask, I imagine. Are you thinking of them now? Those things that hurt you? Hurt you with love?”

She nodded, the wind blowing chimes through holes in the cellular greenhouse canopy above them.

“Well, Pearl, they’re all gone, and don’t you know they’re not coming back. I won’t ask you to think of all the things you love which are still here, because I know you’re smart enough to figure out where I’d go with that. All the love on Earth is like a runoff stream: it flows in times of warmth, dries in times of cold, but it always stays where you are for only a brief time.”

“This doesn’t really make sense, though. Runoff comes from snow at higher elevations. If I just went further up the mountain, I’d have all the snow I could ever want.”

“Snow is not runoff—snow is the progenitor, and without guidance it would sit, useless, forever. So tell me, do you want to sit in your kingdom of nothing forever? Or would you rather come back down to where things live and breathe?”

“And die…”

“Yes, and die. And all the other beautiful things that happen when water is allowed to be in motion.”

Pearl spoke, shaken but confident. “I’ve been trying to escape that place for so long now, but… It’s hard. It’s very hard.”

“Well, let me show you a trick.”

He grabbed Pearl’s hand and smothered it against the mandala, destroying part of its geometry. She recoiled in shock, but then tempered herself. “Keep in mind this is not at all the proper procedure for dismantling one of these, but, perhaps it’s worth it for my demonstration—I haven’t really practiced in years anyway. But, do you see how the water’s moved, now?” he asked.

“That wasn’t some random disaster, though, it was my hand. You didn’t have to do that.”

“If I didn’t do it, then perhaps a bird would’ve come and stomped on it, or this building would’ve collapsed into a heap on the ground. Sometimes we can delay the inevitable, but the liquid of life will never stop flowing. Now, we sit, reflect, and start the process over again.”

Pearl laughed awkwardly. “You must have a lot of patience to even think about doing _that_ again.”

“And I think the same of you, when you choose to get up every morning.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Well, you’re here—clearly you’ve done something. Everything will fall and grow again. So please tell me, now that you’ve experienced what it’s like to be the warmth which melts the ice, will you melt your kingdom of nothing?”

\---

As the sun rose over The Chesapeake Bay on an early October morning, four years after Pearl’s encounter with the garden figure, the day broke to reveal a cornfield, leveled completely to the ground by a magical energy blast, lacking a single trace of the pattern which once lived within it.

\---

The school was recently renovated: glass covered much of the building’s frontal façade, and solar panels, whose morning reflections would sometimes assault the eyes of drowsy students meandering toward their day’s destination, provided power to the entire facility. Where there wasn’t glass, red and green streaks of paint brushed across the building’s stucco exterior, which, combined with its copper roof, still glimmering and untouched by patina, gave the building a sleek yet kitschy sensibility.

Ignoring all of this, Steven and Connie walked quickly through the entrance, turning directly to the receptionist’s desk. Their laser-focus was beneficial for the task at hand, but, of course, did not allow them to fully appreciate what would turn out to be their last time ever stepping foot within the school.

Connie greeted the woman behind the desk. “Yeah, hi, I’m—I mean, we’re here to speak with Principle Roy.”

“And was Principle Roy informed of this visit beforehand?” the receptionist asked.

“Should I have called? I mean, I read the letter he sent—it doesn’t sound like he’s generally very busy.”

“One moment please.” The receptionist proceeded to hold down a button on the pager beside her. “Roy? There’s some kids here to see you, can they come into your office?”

“Alright, why not?” replied a coarse voice.

She let go of the button. “That’s room 3070, on the third floor. Just knock and he’ll let you in.”

“Thank you so much, ma’am!” Connie replied.

They located the room down a squeaky-clean hallway whose floor resembled that of a gym and knocked on the plain wooden door, at once excited and apprehensive of what was to come. A rather burly man, aged about sixty years and wearing a plaid bath robe, purple and pink splatters of paint all across it (they couldn’t tell if these were recent editions, or if this was the condition he bought it in), opened the door as he rubbed his eye lethargically.

“You’re the kids, I presume?”

Connie nodded as Steven twiddled his thumbs.

“Alright, come on in then.”

\---

Steven awoke violently, as he often did from nightmares. Taking a few deep breaths, he began to prepare for the day ahead of him—that is, until recalling his dream… The peace he felt when he flew above his tormented double, the serenity when the circus was blown apart by what seemed like divine intervention, was a sensation he could not shake. In all the years this nightmare had persisted, he had never been saved from the wrath of the flashing men. In fact, he had never known a beauty as pure as the one he experienced upon being rescued in his entire life. And what did his saviour command…?

And at that moment, laying in his bed, he experienced one of the rarest moments in all existence: a pure clarity of paths—to know exactly how and why the event you are experiencing will change your life forever. Usually one has to get that sort of thing from Garnet but, sometimes, in moments as beautiful as they are rare, the human mind requires no assistance.

_Love yourself, Steven. You have the power to make the music in your heart sing._

He tried to make as little sound as possible as he packed his ukulele into the trunk of his car.

\---

As Connie sat on the curb, crying hysterically into the ripped pieces of paper she once held up as irrefutable evidence of her innocence, Steven wondered how best to console someone whose happiness hinged on a variable he could not control.

“He’s ruined my life!” she said. “That… Bastard! I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything.”

“I know what it’s like to be punished for something you can’t control,” Steven said.

“What am I going to tell my parents? I’ll be grounded for life. My life is over!”

“Please, try to calm down,” he said, grabbing her hand and smiling through turgid clouds of his own indecision. “It’ll be okay.”

Perhaps there was a time, when Connie had something to lose, that this invasion of personal space would’ve caused a negative reaction in her. But now, after so many pieces of her life had been taken, added, shuffled, placed haphazardly upon each other like a celestial game of Jenga, the tower collapsed at last. And what was left to salvage in the ruins of this new future?

She tried to smile back at him through her tears, squeezing his hand. “I feel like you’re the only person I trust when they say something like that.”

She hugged him, and stuck, like an insect on flypaper.


	4. Delmarva I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, this one took quite a while to finish--i apologize. i often phase in and out of interests, so this was on the backburner for a while. regardless, here's chapter 4.

“Oww… I really should’ve brought my shoes.”

“No kidding. You know we’re walking fifteen miles, right?”

“ _Miles_?! I thought you said _minutes_.”

Emily and Zoe (pronounced “zoh”) precariously trekked across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, occasionally being shouted at by drivers forced to swerve out of their way.

Zoe covered her ears during a particularly long bout of honking. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be walking here you know!” she yelled meekly over the traffic.

“Now that you mention it, there doesn’t seem to be any place for pedestrians here… Oh well, it’ll only be another hour or so before we get to Sandy Point.”

“Eeeuuughhhh…”

What they witnessed last night in the rural dregs of Kent Island was not something you could simply come home and tell mama about. As they left Pearl to attend to her business in the field, a great flash of white shot up from behind them, followed by the loudest noise they’d ever heard. To Emily, it was clear that Pearl was no average kook—this had been some deliberate act of terrorism against their home in the Slower Lower.

But why would someone want to so pointlessly disrupt their simple lives? Much to her chagrin, Emily had nary a clue. So, without a wink of sleep, they set off on foot to Annapolis, hoping the police there could apprehend the long-nosed ne’er-d-well.

“Sis I’m cold and wet,” Zoe said.

“How’n the heck are you wet? Did you trip in a lake?”

“No, I… Well, after we left I saw a little rodent and I think he wanted to splash me.”

“What?”

“But he didn’t splash me.”

Another car whizzed by, honking.

“And so, this rodent _wanted_ to splash you, but—”

“I think I just need to sleep. I’ve been awake since yesterday morning and my tummy feels like it’s a dumbbell.”

The massive twin bridges rose above the bay, their images reflected in the water. The only thing separating the sisters from a fatal plunge into the waters of the New World was a short steel barrier, whose maximum height fell a few inches short of Emily, the tallest of the two. It was a sunny day, but chilly, and Zoe’s dirty blonde hair had Emily lost in a fantasy of tropical warmth. She remembered being on Florida Island as a toddler—the gallerias and smells of exotic cooking, memories far removed from the banality of everyday existence in Delmarva. Outwardly she seemed tense, but deep inside, Emily had been wanting an excuse for adventure for far longer than she cared to admit.

The wind wept between the trusses of the bridge. “I think the weather might turn soon!” Emily said.

“You know this really stinks. I wanna go home.” Zoe was shivering, her arms wrapped around her chest. “Can’t we tell aunty about this? She’s pretty cool, and stuff.”

“If you wanna call her you can go ahead and—”

Pushed off balance by the rapid winds, Emily began to stumble toward the railing. Flailing her arms around like windmills, her body fell against the cold steel banister at a perpendicular angle. Her backside gave way to gravity and her head slid downward as Zoe shouted in surprise.

“Are you okay?!”

“Ow. Yeah, just…”

As she regained her bearings, she realized her head had become lodged within the upper gap of the railing—between two poles at the top and middle of the structure. Zoe rushed over to pull her out

“Hold on lemme—”

“Ahh! No oww! Ow ow! Stop! You’re—elongating my neck in an incredibly unnatural fashion!”

Zoe knelt onto the concrete road, cars still swerving to avoid her. This was exactly the kind of awkward predicament she was hoping to avoid today.

“Just—hngg!” She grunted as she pushed her legs against the corner of the railing, trying to leverage her strength. “Turn, your, head!”

“Stop! Stop! You’re gonna break my neck! I’m gonna be quadriplegic!”

“Why are you always complaining, huh? I’m—trying to help you!”

“You’re not helping! You’re making it worse!”

“Well—” Zoe stopped trying to pull her free. “Maybe I don’t even _wanna_ help you, you know, you _poopyhead_!”

“Zoe, please, you just need a nap is all. You darn near broke my neck you stupid—”

“ _You_ stupid! You! Do you know how hard I try to be nice to you all the time? What do you want from me? I’m not a computer surgeon! I don’t care about your fancy words in your older kid textbooks! I’m your sister, and I wanna talk about horses and boys and jewelry. And—and maybe that’s reinforcing a society of Pantry Archie but I don’t care! I don’t even know who Archie is for crying out loud!”

She sat down and started crying.

“You know,” she tried to say through diaphragm contractions, “when we used—when we used to go to the neighbour’s house, and—and—”

“Sis please, not this story again.”

“And Sean’s parents gave us that horse book? And—and you _know_ that’s when I started to like horses because we spent _all night_ looking through that book together, and laughing, and not thinking about anything else. And then—then I find out you sold it to buy some stupid Einstein book? And you didn’t even ask me? I don’t know what those books are teaching you but it’s certainly not how to be a good sister!”

Zoe covered her eyes for a while, crying and occasionally peaking out through cracks she would make with her fingers. She checked to see if Emily was doing anything, but she wasn’t—she just stared out into the bay, out into the quickly-turning-overcast reflection of the sky.

“Zoe,” Emily said, “if I stay still for long enough, breathing calmly and deeply, focusing on a single point in the distance, I can lower my heart rate, which makes my adrenaline levels go down, which makes it much easier to think of a way to tell you that I’ve felt bad about that horse thing since the day it happened.”

She was silent for a moment. “Those are the kinds of things my books teach me. Maybe I need to spend some time learning from you too, though.”

Zoe sat up and slowly stopped crying. “I think if you just turned your head sideways, you could slip out pretty easy.”

“I know,” Emily replied, “I was just waiting. The water sure is beautiful today.”

\---

Sheena rushed over to the phone, already ringing for at least a dozen seconds before she picked up.

“Hello? Oh, Tera! How have you been? What…? No, no, haven’t seem ‘em. Have you tried calling their cell? …No answer. Hm, well, I’ll let you know if they show up here. Alright have a good day. Okay, bye.”

\---

Driving out westward together across the peninsula came with a certain apprehension, as would be expected from such a brash decision. For Connie, especially, this sort of unplanned excursion wasn’t the type of move she’d typically make—at the most it was the sort of thing she’d daydream of, but even then, only during those most distant episodes of wandering.

And each scene of fields and trees that passed by their window made the consequences of their decision evermore real. The sickness grew deeper with each bump on the dirty roads, each turn onto these further cascading tendrils of the American countryside. Gaps in the radio became moments of unwanted self-reflection. Connie spilled a bit of water onto the dashboard after a particularly nasty pothole crept up beneath them. The droning of the engine, becoming like the guilty whisper of their conscience. It was all those things which are seldom thought about that made the trip feel surreal and ominous. No rebellious fantasy ever includes the workaday troubles of an ill-planned road trip—moments long forgotten in the annuls of childhood memory.

By the time they’d reached Annapolis, the sky was a uniform grey, coating Delmarva’s capital in an unearthly light. Connie’s father had always boasted about the historic downtown district, whose European-style roads and endless promenades of antique and jewelry shops made, he admitted, something of an idealistic mockery of their forefathers. Regardless, she wanted to stop and stroll around there, having not visited since she was a young child—plus, their stomachs were growling since well before crossing the bay.

On Main Street, people milled about in casual attire, poking their heads into specialty shops and, if sufficiently young, tugging on their parents’ coats in a futile attempt to relocate themselves somewhere more interesting. However, to Connie, there was nothing more soothing than even a faux communion with something larger than herself. The world of colonial America she imagined as she wandered the streets swept her away into a world of fantasy not unlike the many alternate realities of her books. Seagulls flew about in the distance, sometimes landing on the city’s numerous moored ships. The decorative bushes placed on old-fashioned streetlights along the outer edges of the red brick road swayed softly in the chilly breeze.

Steven and Connie slipped into a quaint café. They had settled on a compromise: Connie felt a nostalgic pull towards the city, and Steven had recently become a self-proclaimed “fan” of French Dark Roast, its caffeine giving him respite from the exhaustion of his emotional battles. So, as a synthesis of these ideas, they decided to go for downtown coffee and croissants.

“Just a London Fog, please,” said a man in front of them wearing a naval officer’s uniform.

The line to order was long, and Steven was hungry, so the wait became more unbearable the closer they got to the till.

“And,” he continued, “can you put a bit of cinnamon on top of it? And a strawberry? I know that sounds weird.”

Connie stroked her chin and spoke softly to herself. “London Fog… Cinnamon… Strawberry—wait!” She turned to face Steven. “That’s Lisa’s favourite drink from the Spirit Morph Saga!” she said in an excited whisper.

He shrugged and smiled. “Coincidence?”

“Maybe… But, that’s so oddly specific.”

“Is that all, sir?” asked the woman behind the counter.

“Yeah. Sorry if it’s weird. I’ve had a weird day so, perfect. Some crazy police reports coming out about the Eastern Shore—I have some cop friends, just in case you’re wondering. It’s not a conspiracy or anything.” The woman nodded.

Eventually, they got their food and drinks. Sitting at a table, Steven unconsciously leaned over his coffee with an arched back, hands wrapping fully around it. He spent a lot of time looking away from people lately.

“You seem unsure about all this,” she said. His leg bounced rhythmically.

“I just need some time to figure out how to process all this.” He smiled one of those hollow smiles that had become normal for him.

“It’s okay to say if you aren’t okay, you know.” He just kept smiling, staring down into his cup, tapping on its rim. “I’m fine,” he said.

The café was abuzz with the typical subdued clatter of a coffeehouse. People rustled newspapers, typed away at laptops, droned on in menial conversations invariably lost to the white noise of social ambience. Just as Connie started to hone in on a particular stranger’s conversation, lost in her thoughts in some attempt to escape the stress of Steven’s discomfort, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“By the way, young lady, don’t think I didn’t overhear you talking about one of my favourite series.”

It was the man in the naval uniform, crunching a soon-to-be-discarded napkin in his hand, approaching them on a short excursion from his quest to dispose of his personal waste.

“So you _did_ know!” she said excitedly. Steven looked up from his drink.

“I still find time for fun, despite,” he waved his hands downwards in front of his body as if displaying a prized possession, “the demands of the job.”

“Of course! Thank you for your service, sir!” she said.

“I mostly teach nowadays. Why don’t you come down to the academy and thank some _real_ brave souls?”

“Oh, I’d love to sir but—” Steven looked at her with apprehension. “But, uh, our itinerary’s pretty packed right now.”

The man let out a sigh that seemed not to come from any place of genuine discomfort. “That’s too bad—the naval academy is one of the most popular spots around here.”

“We’re not really tourists,” Steven said, trying his hardest to seem in high spirits, “just passing through. Do you like coffee?” He held up his mug and showed its contents to the man.

“Just tea for me, thanks. I’m not done talking to your friend, though—it’s so rare to find someone else interested in Spirit Morph, especially someone so young. What’s your name?”

“Connie,” she replied.

“Nice to meet you Connie, I’m Luke,” he said, and shook her hand. “Well Connie, I’m going to tell you something that makes a lot of Spirit Morph fans seethe with rage, if I may be so dramatic.” By this point, Luke had pulled up and chair and sat down at the duo’s table, crinkled napkin still in hand.

“And what’s that?”

Luke leaned in and cracked a smile. “Destiny’s End is the _worst_ of the series.”

“I agree!” she exclaimed, immediately regretting her decision to take a bite of croissant only moments earlier. Her spittle coated Luke like renegade blood from the wounds of a hypothetical fallen comrade. “Oh! I’m—“she swallowed, “I’m so sorry…” Embarrassing.

“It’s fine. At least I know you’re truly in agreement now.” He winked at her, leaving Steven with a markedly disgusted look on his face. “We learned a lot about how to detect truthfulness in people at the academy way back when, and although spit wasn’t formally covered, I believe it’s a good indication.”

Steven cleared his throat. “Ah, that was sure a nice meal.”

“So,” Connie began, “any other Spirit Morph ‘hot takes’?”

Steven leaned his head forward so as to be almost wedged between them. “Are you full as well Connie? Because I’m _really_ full, wow. You know it’s kind of funny how we’re in a restaurant while we’re both full. I mean, restaurants are places where you eat, after all. It seems so silly to be inside one when you’re full, doesn’t it?”

Luke stood up and stretched. “Sounds like you two have somewhere to be. I’ll just—”

“No, no, it was great talking to you, don’t worry about it.”

He tipped his hat at her. “Guess it’s time for me to head on back to the Plaza of Tenogeth.”

She laughed. “What, like from book two?”

He nodded. “Amy Haino _did_ base her description of that location on our academy grounds, after all.”

“Tenogeth is based on _this_ academy, here?”

“Yessum,” he said with a slight bow.

Steven knew what he was in for when Connie turned to him with those eyes, gleaming like a child seeing snow for the first time.

“Just thirty minutes?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?” he replied, still wearing that fake smile he had regrettably become known for.

Connie wanted to take pictures of the crowded docks lining the Annapolis coastline as they walked with Luke down to the naval academy, but couldn’t turn her phone on, for fear of seeing the presumably large number of missed calls.

“So,” Connie pointed into the distance, “is that the tree where Lisa bandaged Archimicarus’s talons in chapter nine?”

“You sure know your stuff.” Luke had his hands clasped together behind his back.

“It’s just amazing to be here, sir. As a dedicated _Morphite_ , this place is like hallowed ground to me. And to think I had no idea all these years…”

Luke laughed. “This is just the beginning. You know, Tenogeth’s Tomb is based on our barracks downstairs.”

“You mean the place where Plinkman was imprisoned?”

“The very same.”

“That’s like my favourite part of the series! The brutality Haino uses in describing the Unbethian torture methods is pure genius. I actually winced when Plinkman’s skin was flayed right off of his body—‘just like slicing bread’ is what Tenogeth said. The lore of the torture was so masterfully put together, I really felt like _I_ was being tortured, you know? I have almost that entire section highlighted in my copy back at home.”

The others nodded, entirely unsure of what would be an appropriate response.

When they reached the staircase that supposedly led down into the barracks, Connie’s face collided with a spiderweb.

“Ah! Ewww…”

“It’s just a little baby,” Steven said, his voice still struggling to raise above a whimper, “it won’t hurt you.”

She giggled apprehensively. “How can you stay so innocent?”

A blast of heat escaped the stairwell as Luke swung open its rusted metal entrance. He gestured his hand towards the open doorway, eyebrows raised in excitement.

The kids began descending in front of him. “Wow, pretty warm in here, huh?” Connie said.

“The ventilator’s been on the fritz,” Luke said.

“Wow,” she exclaimed. “You’d think it’d still be chilly down here in October, especially considering we’re going underground.”

“Strange times indeed,” he said. His pace began to quicken, his footsteps landing with evermore reckless _thuds_ against the stained concrete below. Soon, the speed of their descent became uncomfortably fast.

And flights kept passing—three flights, four, five… ten… The air only getting hotter and stuffier with each terrifying turn ‘round the bend of the pillar which filled the stairwell’s shaft. Steven and Connie started looking around apprehensively, in that way we do when trying to find our way out of a situation which we know lacks an easy exit.

“Is it normal for barracks to be this deep, sir?” Connie asked.

Luke stopped. “No,” he said coldly. “No, it’s really not normal at all. It’s also not normal for unlit concrete stairwells to reach well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the dead of an overcast fall afternoon. It’s sad, too—because you almost seemed smart, little girl. _Almost_.”

The duo stared at Luke in terror for a few moments, before being instructed to continue moving. Connie, who was positioned closest to Luke, knew she couldn’t slip past him, as his arms and legs were stretched out like a goalie in a deliberate attempt to block her. Could she try to fit between his legs? But then… How would Steven get out?

If only moments of intense fear were not so clouded by immediate thought, for otherwise they might serve as useful reminders for us to live in the present. To become aware of yourself as a temporary thing which floats unwittingly between states of being, is a beautiful and precious epiphany. A level-headed brush with death might even make the rest of the ride so much sweeter—like how fruit is most ripe just before it goes bad. But the ego must ruin this, too. Can one ever truly _be something_ when what we call existence is only the summing up of our wildly branching perceptions? We remain the same day by day only by an approximation of averages, sorting impulses into words, names, descriptions, all of which facilitated by a consciousness which itself is as vulnerable to senseless destruction as any of the malleable categories which attempt to define it. What the fuck does anything really matter, anyway, in moments such as these? _If only I could get out of this_ , some lucky few have surely thought, _I’d never again judge another_. That is the dream of abstract terror: a moment where we are free at last from the always-too-tight grip of this psychological rat race. And what is Connie thinking about now, goalies? Horror films? Lord, how many fools have met their end contemplating the same tired things…

After what must have been almost fifty flights, they stepped down into a short hallway. The air was thick and gaseous with something disturbingly unlike oxygen. Glowing embers burst into existence before their eyes in the thin smoke.

“Go ahead and open that door,” Luke said to Steven, “then smile wide, cute little thing.”

Steven swung the door open. The first thing he noticed were the screams. They were not screams of any distinguishable wrong-doing, something that he could run in and save—no, the screams came from everywhere. Before him was a chasm so deep he could not see the bottom, holes etched into brimstone along the walls like a bee’s nest of the macabre. Twitching figures of stretched skin, many sunken eyes, some burning, some sobbing, some even falling rapidly past him down the chasm, their exhausted vocal cords hammering in pain as the Doppler effect reduced their pleas to cartoonish growls.

Fires burned across the realm. In some places, where there were more stalactites and glowing crystals, the fires turned a vibrant blue. In others, where blood soaked the sepia halls of suffering like graffiti, they became an unnaturally rich shade of crimson. Steven’s breath quickened. “What—” He faltered. “What the heck is this place?”

“Oh, we’ve become worthy of censorship? Well I must say I’m flattered, and not even just from the irony,” Luke said with a grin.

“Just let us go, please!” Connie pleaded.

“Ohh, so soon?” Luke leaned down to look in her eyes. “But I thought you loved that part of your little story, where that stupid man gets tortured? I must say I _was_ impressed to hear about your love of torture—you know the rest of that stuff I said about loving your favourite book saga was just a ploy to get you here but, torture on the other hand, now _that_ is a genuine—”

“Hey!” Steven exclaimed. Luke stood up and looked at him. “Don’t be so rude or I’ll start the skin-flaying sooner than you—”

Revealing from behind his back a rock he found on the floor, Steven hurled it at Luke’s face. Direct hit. By the time Luke regained his composure, the kids were gone.

“Geoffriatus!” Luke said, snapping his fingers. A small flying man appeared in the air in front of him. “Yes?”

“Find those kids, you foul excuse for a familiar!”

“Oi, firstly, wot kids, idiot. I just got ‘ere ya know, just summoned outta nothin’, fookin’ ‘ere I am scratchin’ me ‘ead, just came into existence a few seconds ago mind you, wonderin’ ‘oh gee, what’s my first task of the day gonna be? Oh I’m ever so excited.’ ‘course I get ‘a pissed off wanker screamin’ in me ear, blathering on about this whole load ‘a nonsense I don’t give a fook about—just a load a nonsense really. You’ve always got kids down ‘ere mate? How the fook am I supposed to know wot kids ya mean? I mean honestly.”

“Would you like me to draw a sketch for you? How hard do you really think it would be to locate two human children down here? You don’t think they’d _stand out_ at all?”

“It’s not really that mate it’s just I’m a bit ‘urt is all. Could’ve said it in a way nicer way ya know, is all… Sir.”

Steven led Connie by the hand—bounding over fissures in the hot stone floor, a fall down any of which would mean, at the very least, a minor inconvenience, assuming Steven’s floating powers took effect. Oh yeah… What’s up with his powers anyway?

“What’s up with your powers, anyway?” Connie exclaimed. “Can’t you just turn into a pink demigod and save us, or something?”

“I—I don’t know,” he said.

“You _do_ know, don’t you? What is it you’ve been hiding from me? Don’t think I haven’t noticed how weird you’ve been acting.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” Steven said. Connie was silent, too afraid of too many things to count to speak up.

They turned and ran into a cave lit by purple crystals, the walls reflective like mirrors. Multi-eyed creatures glared at them as they ran past.

“Where are we even going?” Connie asked as they brushed past glowing bay leaves and pools of viscous jelly.

“Just… Somewhere far away from here.”

Steven began to panic—yes, honestly panic—and the reason his powers did not manifest was hidden within a dream of a curse of a terrible secret of—

And the room they accidentally entrapped themselves in started glowing like the holodeck of a ship from science fiction. Connie cowered, Steven just looked down—so sure the moment of his deliverance had finally arrived and, knelt to accept the final blow which his foolishness had brought. The creature lumbered over from the dark, lights now flashing rapidly. It moved like a rotoscopic entity. Steven could feel its breath. He waited…

“Name’s Larry,” the creature said, “hope I didn’t scare you too bad.”

They sat at an eyeball table, drinking iced eyeball tea (well, Steven only pretending to drink), watching eyeballs grow wide on the creature as they recalled their tale.

“So, you don’t know where you are, then?”

“Not a clue,” Connie said.

“Probably for the best. You lot certainly don’t belong here.”

“I could guess that,” she said, staring at Larry’s myriad disfigured facial features. “We really appreciate your hospitality. We were pretty scared back there, right Steven?”

“Oh! Yeah…” he said, as if her words jolted him up from sleep. Whether coffee or eyeball tea, Steven was always staring down into his cup.

“Has this lad got shell shock?” Larry asked.

“No! Oh, wait, actually…” Connie trailed off, remembering that night at the hospital. It was only maybe a week ago, but truth be told it felt to her like a lifetime had passed.

“Don’t worry about it, girl, we don’t judge down here. Most of us have got it really—I’ve heard some of the younger ones call it PTSD? Any rate, the ones who didn’t already have it from the war usually get it shortly after they show up. Pretty sad. I’ve had my fair share of episodes but, nowadays I mostly keep to myself. Made a little refuge in the cave here.”

He extended his tentacles to caress the rough, hewn walls around them. A single candle of unknown material illuminated the room. “Sometimes we get books down here but not too often. I have a guy who hooks me up, though. So, mostly I just sit here with my tea and read nowadays. It’s helped but, it sure took a while. Still have little outbursts sometimes. It’s pretty rough. The passive anxiety hasn’t gone away, really.”

“You mentioned a war? What war?” She took a sip of her tea.

“Oh, we’re all from different wars—American civil war, world wars, hundred years’ war… You get the picture. One lad said he was from some Viking conflict, God only knows when and why, can’t recall a bloody thing he said in terms of location—all sounded like made-up words to me. But, anyway, I remember how broken-hearted I was when he stood up and asked if he was in Valhalla…”

He sighed. “I said, ‘oh, you’ve got no idea how wrong you are’. What a rude bugger I was. Truthfully I did feel bad though, but…” He gave a tentacled shrug. “When you’re under stress yourself, sometimes it’s easier to just hide that sort of thing.”

“So, what is this place, then?”

He gurgled out a sullen laugh. “Well, it’s not Valhalla. Nor Heaven, Hell, Hades, Shangri-La… Whatever other ‘place’ you like. I only wish it were so easy. I spent a lot of time asking the same question when I first arrived here. Eventually I realized this place is nothing like any of those places, because those places have purpose. Valhalla is not only a location but an idea—the promise that a brave warrior’s sacrifice will never be forgotten. But here, those same men tumble down the chasm like discarded paper, old food, chosen to fall as randomly as drops of rain. And we get all sides of the moral spectrum, too, good and bad. There’s no place where the pious are rewarded and the sinful punished. Sometimes I wonder if I’d prefer that kind of structure, or if I’m happy with how things are. But, regarding matters of fate, I can’t imagine a more appropriate resting place for us who lived years uncertain if we’d see our bed at day’s end. This is the afterlife of superposition.”

Indeed, it was a tale Connie had heard before—a land of whimsy which hides a dark secret. She need not even reference the Spirit Morph Saga to illustrate its ubiquity among the history of stories. And now they found themselves well and truly within it, not just merely observing it or thinking about it in some abstract sense. It was the classic dream which hid death behind its veil.

Just as Connie was about to finish her tea, Steven started sobbing—trying hard to conceal it. But, it wasn’t long before she noticed, and when she did, his silent tears turned to full-on crying—snot and everything.

“I just—I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, gripping his cup ever tighter.

“Lad,” Larry said, “none of us have got the faintest idea what we’re doing. Do you think we wanted to end up _here_? Do you think this was planned, sought after? We all just take it as it comes, never knowing what will be around the next corner, behind the next door, right? But, in my opinion, the real mark of a man of strength is his satisfaction with the uncertain future of his happiness—his willingness to accept with maturity this uncomfortable fact which lesser men spend a lifetime running away from, ‘s what I say.”

“I think I’m doing both at once,” Steven replied. Connie had her hand on his shoulder by this point.

“Oh, and,” Connie began sheepishly, turning to face Larry, “women can do that stuff too.” She smiled.

“Yes! And women! Sorry I’ve still got a bit of that old Brit in me. It’s tough making it last down here, though. Not much left. Who knows what I am anymore.”

The group heard a bang against the secret entrance to their hiding spot.

“Hey, open up! It’s chasm police ‘ya inbred!”

Larry put on an innocent voice. “Coming!” He turned to the kids and spoke in a hushed tone. “Listen, the vent system that normally keeps the stairwells cool, some hooligans shut it down—tried to climb out through there. They couldn’t make it because they’re not human—melted, or something, but you could. The entrance is down near the bottom of the chasm. I’ll distract him while you two slip past—I don’t want any more poor souls to be condemned down here forever.”

The kids hid behind Larry as he threw open the entrance to his abode. “What seems to be the problem officer?”

“Cut the ham, turkey, I know you know just exactly what’s up, buster.”

“Truthfully I don’t, my good man. Does it have to do with my illegal cheese operation?”

The cop was silent for a moment, tentacles scratching four separate locations on his head. “Huh?”

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t’ve used the word ‘illegal’, per se. But it is at the very least morally questionable.” He signalled for the kids to escape. “It’s over in the corner here, behind uhm… Well, I have this secret furnace you see, and a storage cabinet for my coagulants. If you’ll follow me sir, it’s just down this way.”

The door shut behind them, with Connie and Steven on the outside of it, having secretly maneuvered past the officer.

They stood still for a moment at the precipice of the chasm, shaking slightly. Then, Connie turned to Steven.

“Okay, you grab hold of me and on three we jump down. Ready? One… Two—”

“No, Connie no that’s—not a good idea.”

“What? But, you have floating powers. Just float us down.”

“It’s not gonna work.”

She paused a beat from concern. “Is there something you should be telling me about right now?”

He bit his lip, crossing his arms and rubbing his shoulder nervously. “I—I tried to break my gem this morning. That’s why my powers aren’t working.”

“Jesus, Steven, what?!” She knew he had been acting strangely lately, but this… This was like some gem version of suicide. The anxiety she felt towards him, built up over the last year, had finally reached its boiling point. “What the—what the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re trying to kill yourself now, and you didn’t even tell me? You never tell me anything! You never tell _anyone_ anything. We’re just trying to help you!” And then she could hold back her own tears no longer. “You think we don’t deserve to know these things? Is that it? You hate yourself so much that no one else can—”

“If I had an explanation, I’d tell you right now, okay?”

“No!” She was fed up with his reclusive attitude. “No, you don’t just get to walk away from this one! Steven I’m not mad I’m just…”

They heard the shouts of chasm police approaching behind them. “We’ll have to slide down.” Connie swallowed, regaining a bit of stoicism.

After hearing a particularly loud shout, they spun around to find themselves face to face with a squad of baton-wielding eyeball-cops. The largest and most regal member stepped forward. “Alright, basically, we’re taking you in, because big boy says he wants you, and yeah that’s basically all okay…” He could barely finish the sentence without fading to a creaky whisper. “So just please turn yourselves in and yeah, or else we’ll have to probably hit you real hard and yeah…”

They turned back to face the chasm, the all-encompassing darkness which now overcame their tunneled vision, hearts racing.

“You’ll never catch me alive, coppers!” she said in a trembling voice. Despite her fear, she could never pass up the opportunity to create a moment like this

They looked into each other’s eyes. “One… Two… Three!”

It was not a triumphant leap, but rather a lanky _jutting out_ which sent them tumbling down into the murky pit. They held hands and tried their best to keep their centre of gravity facing in towards the chasm’s edge, hitting protruding rocks on their way down. There were many grunts of pain. Neither had the strength to open their eyes. Steven’s arm flailed upward and tagged the edge of a nearby boulder, causing a gash. In fact, he received many injuries, the full extent of which he knew he would not comprehend until well after they reached the bottom (if they even survived, that is). Connie took a more brute-force pummeling. Her head and chest were whacked several times, and her response to each successive battery was only to screw her eyes shut more tightly. Then, a thud—one which felt so separate from themselves, but one which they knew could’ve been made only by their bodies hitting the ground beneath them.

By the time the dust settled, and Steven had regained a sliver of consciousness, the sounds of Connie groaning in pain echoed softly through the deep. Steven sat up in silence for a while, before turning to Connie and asking her if she was alright. She replied with a more up-beat moan, nodding her head, then stopping and trying to shrug instead. Connie raised her arm and pointed towards the large and dented silver vent, wide open with a ladder at the end of it, and the faint trickle of evening daylight sprinkling down from above.

Down the docks, the promenade, the rocky shores, they hobbled. At one point they stopped, sat on a bench, Connie looking out to the horizon for some comfort beyond this world. Wasn’t crying so cliché now? Like a neglected child who learns that pleas are empty without response, she felt a pull towards some less pathetic and more harmful means of coping.

Out here the people skipped about, the mailmen whistled, the rats scurried on their solid ground, never knowing just feet below them rested the terrible secret of a hellish afterlife, where forgotten soldiers at last accepted their deaths at the hands of powers too entangled to comprehend. And in what way were they, and all people, not subjects of their own Luke—a force which commandeers our supposedly inalienable humanity? Just this morning she had felt like this ordeal was her decision, but now, before the unknowable tide of the Atlantic, the marionette’s strings glistened. Perhaps crying really is to beg for respite from the punishments of a cruel master…

She looked down, kicking her heel against raised cobblestone. “I’m sorry for getting mad.”

“It’s okay… I should’ve told you it’s just, I was too scared.”

“Do you think it’ll ever heal?”

“I don’t know.”

The sun fell behind a wall of darkening clouds.

“Well, I’ll love and support you no matter what,” Connie said.

Steven turned to face her, legs swinging nervously. “I really appreciate that—really.” He smiled

“Do you feel like… It’s probably not the dandelion’s fault if its seeds don’t reach fertile ground?”

“Oh… Yeah I guess that’s true… I used to love blowing on dandelions.”

“And now our hopes are scattered in the air like wayward dandelion seeds. Kinda full circle, no?”

“I can’t say I’m following you, but I love the image.”

The breeze blew west as a vehicle crossed the bay, searching for its children.


	5. Delmarva II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> casual 3 month break--dont worry about it.

“Well, fuck…”

It was all Amethyst could say after discovering Steven, his car, and several of his musical instruments gone without a trace. She emerged from the temple in the late morning, groggy from a night of sleep and binge-eating. Normally she would see Steven frantically running about at this time—sifting through notes, drinking coffee, trying to get from this place to that place (who even knows what place anymore) as quickly as possible. However, on this day she was instead greeted by the eerie still air of a dry October morning leaking in through an unlocked front door. Alarm bells went off in her mind like a finished wrestling match.

Garnet was alerted immediately, but it took Pearl another hour to show up—mounted on her bike, wheels dipping sadly into the sand—another one of her mysterious late-night escapades. Amethyst always assumed she was just getting some action—and not the kind you read about in your garden-variety comic books—but Garnet, her future vision being tripped up again and again, was far more suspicious. Still, this was not the time for interrogation.

“Yo P, have you seen Steven?”

“Uhh…” She scratched her neck sheepishly. The other two were standing on the beach as she dismounted, waiting for her to arrive. “Not… Recently.”

“Well, he’s gone.”

It took her a moment to process. “Gone?!”

“Amethyst discovered him missing this morning,” Garnet said. “No trace of him or his car.”

“Well, he’s much older and more independent now—I’m sure he’s just out on some errand,” Pearl said.

“Without telling me?” Amethyst replied. “No way man—Steven once ran into the temple just to tell me he was gonna leave for Little Homeworld five minutes earlier than usual. If he left without telling us, there must be a reason.”

“Do you have any idea where he could’ve gone?” Pearl asked.

“Hmm…” Garnet adjusted her shades. “Probably went west down Route 50. He might be at the school down by Connie’s house… Or, maybe at the bottom of a lake, not sure.”

“What?” Amethyst snickered condescendingly. “Dude, there’s like, two lakes within forty miles of here. He’s not _that_ bad of a-”

“I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”

Pearl was visibly agitated. “Garnet! this is not helping!”

“Yes it is. We head down to the school, locate Steven, and if we don’t find him there, then… Maybe pack a diving suit.”

“I must say you are being remarkably impudent right now considering the gravity of the situation!” Pearl said.

“Well, we would’ve left immediately but, we were waiting for _you_. So, I think I’m allowed to waste a few extra seconds of time.”

“Dang,” Amethyst whispered to herself.

“Why didn’t you just go without me?”

Garnet raised her voice slightly. “Would you rather have come back here to find no trace of _any_ of us? You can thank me later.”

Pearl crossed her arms. “How are we even going to get there? What, are we gonna form Alexandrite and _run_ across the countryside, no doubt _squashing_ any unfortunate—”

“We’ll drive!”

Pearl looked down and put her hand on her forehead. “And _where_ are we going to get a car from?”

Amethyst raised an arm excitedly. “Well duh, Steven has a—”

They were all silent for a moment. “Oh…”

\---

Emily opened the door confidently. Inside the police station, bookshelves hid dusty filaments of paper, long-since shredded and forgotten. The interior décor was so drab that the beige of the laminated reception desk popped out amongst swaths of grey furniture like the brilliant golden cone of a cycad.

The twins approached the desk, Zoe playfully clawing at its overhanging edges like a chimpanzee, and Emily looking up and meeting the eyes of the man behind it. He seemed preoccupied—printing and shredding paper that will no doubt eventually fall beyond the event horizon of the corners and walls.

“Excuse me, sir, I’d like to report a crime. It’s a very serious crime.”

The man smiled and spoke in an Australian accent. “Are your parents around?”

“You know that’s just it mister, is that, uh, hngg—” Zoe spoke while still swinging herself about. “Is that we just didn’t wanna tell any adults because we only know like, two adults, and well they might not think we were being very smart for even being around where we were, and you know that’s kinda bad and so we don’t wanna get in any trouble, so uh, ah!—” She almost lost her grip. “But I guess you’re an adult so this is all a bit silly so I’ll just stop talking now but that’s why we don’t have any adults with us, and also I haven’t seen my dad since I was just a baby so it would just be a ‘parent’ without the ‘s’.”

Emily shrugged and smiled, nodding towards the cop.

“Are you two hurt at all?” he asked.

“I’m very tired. I don’t know if that counts,” Zoe said.

“No, we’re not hurt,” Emily said, “we were witness to a, dare I say, cataclysmic event on Kent Island, ‘cross the bay. A massive explosion, a practical sea of devastation across—"

“Massive explosion?” he said, “Or more like, a pretty small explosion?”

Emily cleared her throat. “I assure you sir it was comparable to the Christian reckoning. I half expected to see Jesus himself descend upon the field—I won’t lie sir I looked. Thought I saw his holy silhouette above the clouds, but it was just an afterimage of the _catastrophically massive_ explosion.”

“The image was somewhat comparable to a roman candle, would you say?”

She thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose there may have been some Roman candles constructed in the image of our Lord, but it would had to have been after—”

“No, the firework. Roman candles, you know? Bright things that shoot way up high in the air?”

“…I don’t engage in such illegal debauchery.”

“I do,” Zoe said before losing her grip (for real this time) and falling down onto the hard, tiled floor. “Owwww!”

“Yeah, we already sent one of ours down there a couple days ago. Nothing but miscreants setting off a buncha fireworks.” He returned to his menial work.

Emily threw her open palms to either side of her. “You mean we walked all the way down here for nothing? Dammit!”

“Most people just call, you know,” he replied calmly.

“…DAMMIT!”

There was a brief stillness in the room. “Um…” Zoe started nervously. “Uh, I _really_ don’t think that was fireworks.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Emily regained her vigour. “What she said!”

The man sighed. “Listen girls, if it happens again just tell your mum to call 911 alright? If the explosion is as large as you say it is, she’ll have no issue complying.”

“Who’s to say we’ll even _survive_ another one of those? Are you condemning us to death, sir? I thought your motto was to serve and protect, hm? I feel neither protected nor served!”

“Well, the city motto is actually _Vixi Liber Et Moriar_. So, _Vos Moriar Liber_ , I suppose.”

“Ohhh, getting all high-falutin now are we? You think I don’t know Latin? I’ve read Caesar’s book on the Gallic Wars you know! Did you know his descriptions of Gallic traditional ceremonies were the inspiration behind Burning Man?”

“That must be where you got all the drugs you’ve been smoking. It’s fireworks guys—go home. That is all.” The man waved cheekily. “ _Vale_.”

The twins started walking towards the door—Emily enraged, Zoe confused but delighted to finally be going home. Just before they stepped out into the cloudy afternoon light, Emily turned, not being able to resist getting in the final word.

“You’re gonna be fired for this. This is a conspiracy! You’ll see! Mark my words, smarty-pants.”

“Mark? So, your words will be resurrected and then nothing will happen? Sounds about right.”

“You’re a goddang poopyhead!”

“Pfft!”

The bell hanging adjacent to the front door rang loudly from a forceful slam left in the wake of a certifiably tilted Emily and her ragtag, plebeian sidekick, as they stormed out into a world unconcerned with their unusual problems

\---

In her dreams, they sailed across moonlit Mediterranean inlets, strolled the Calles and Carreras of La Candelaria—sipping coffee under awnings which shaded unaccustomed tourists from the Colombian sun in the way which Old World gardens shade wanderers whose lives, too, are the products of wars they never chose to be a part of. They danced in hazy ballrooms like drunk newlyweds of the roaring ‘20s, engaged in accidental yet intimate staring contests across the waters of a river flowing backwards into the fuzzy edges of her subconscious. When she dreamt, it was like living a thousand involuntary romance flicks—the perfection of a life hung forever in imagination.

And what did she find when she awoke? A cold and silent night, blood pumping through her ears, the damaged, scared, and real lover of her dreams—asleep and drooling in the passenger’s seat of a cheap car parked on the side of some forgotten road west of Washington. She ran the events through her mind over and over again, at nearly every waking hour. This boy, whom she hoped might some day pilot a gondola through the waking incarnation of her dreams, was now sitting sleeping off an injury, its aura more sinister with each passing minute. No, it wasn’t anything inflicted by their tumble down the chasm of that secret Naval underbelly—it was the cracked gem which hid just beneath the fabric of his black-and-yellow shirt. She stared and pictured it there, bobbing up and down with his breath. The light was low and artificial. Her eyes reflected the ambient glow of streetlamps like balls of glass, and although she wasn’t aware, a slight coating of tears added to the effect. Just breathe… Don’t mind the burning of the sinuses, the tensing of the muscles…

Perhaps Steven could live on without questioning his motivation that morning, struck by the perfection of a dream much like she is now—but she could not. The nonchalant way in which he had told her about his suicide attempt—yes, that’s what it was—made her sick the more she thought about it. It wasn’t that she was mad—it was more like intense pity, guilt, anxiety. What he must have been through to have even considered doing such a terrible thing, how damaged he must be to report it with such candidness… It made all the European roads of her imagination reveal themselves as nothing more than fantasy.

But this sickening feeling did not make her love him any less. In fact, her love—horrible, painful love—only seemed to strengthen the closer he got to destruction, like two magnets attracting across the crushed bones of a hand placed between them. As the rest of the world retreated away from her, she found that the only thing getting closer was him, and though she didn’t know whether or not it was a good thing, she did understand it was as inevitable as a fundamental force of nature.

So then it was daybreak. A thin vestige of clouds crawled among the heavens of dawn. They went for a walk by a creek behind the vast property of some wealthy landowner. Forest abruptly turned to fields. The horizon was far less flat than it was back on the peninsula—hills which were no doubt once jagged mountains began to spring up from the curve out west as they drove. They saw a dove crushed under the weight of a fallen tree. Connie wondered if God also feels pain when she destroys the things she’s created. “I’m thirsty,” Connie said. “There’s a gas station coming up. We’ll buy some water,” Steven said. Did he have money? The weather turned cloudy again and this time it was rain. The confused animals of the Delmarvan forests scurried about. The car stopped and started. They grunted in pain at each sudden bump which exacerbated their wounds. They stared at the moon and simultaneously imagined the same thing. Connie laughed. Steven laughed. All was a whir of moments she could not believe meant so little. How did she know she loved him when she kept becoming less sure of what love even meant? And now she fell asleep again in the same eerie silence to which she had awoken that morning, and her dreams, relegated by now to the most ostensibly useless corners of her memory, seemed pointless to hold even in jest, and as she remembered the beautiful moonrise that day witnessed behind the silhouettes of forests so foreign to her they may as well have been the primeval vistas of a nursery rhyme, she wondered if those Mediterranean inlets, too, would feel so empty.

“More dreams?”

They sat across from one another at the Chantilly IHOP, Faux-Americana décor surrounding them like a moat keeping the peasants away from Bastille.

He nodded. “I think it’s a message. It feels special.” Indeed, special. Always special—as sure as his nose was sunk in a cup of joe. Wherever steam was found, you best bet…

He took another sip, and his pupils shrank—face loosened up, sudden shock, spat out the coffee. “What the heck?”

“What’s wrong…?” And then she realized, and he not long after. “Oh…! You…” A smile crept across her face, and the diaphragm contracting. She pointed. “Steven—”

“I put salt in my dang coffee! I didn’t think people actually did that—! I thought that was just—” By then he had caught her contagious laughter. “Like movies or something…” he said, spoken under the breath, between chuckles. And her face was on the table, defenceless, and if he wanted to he could’ve hurt her, or ran off, but he didn’t, and she realized then that this was the purpose of play.

“The salt is in the salt-shaker, Steven—the sugar’s in packets.” Her voice was muffled and deadpan. “How did you even do this?” She was giggling madly, and she thought now might be the perfect time to let him see her face again.

But in just a few seconds, he had stopped laughing. Figuring something was wrong, she asked if he was okay.

“Your face coming up from the table just felt really strongly like something.”

“Like ‘something’?” She teased. “Not salt, I hope.”

“Reminded me of ‘ _something’_ , as you say it.” He took another sip of his ruined coffee, knowing it would make her laugh. “Reminded me of the sunrise in my dream.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Is it premonition? Is it simple association?” He put on a silly voice, “We’ll have to wait for the judges’ opinion.”

She smiled again, a different kind of smile this time, which made him look away in a nervous reflex. “Honestly, what show did you watch thinking _that_ was a good line?”

He thought for a moment. “Probably Under the Knife.”

“Well, it was about as smooth as salted coffee—congrats.”

He looked over his shoulder to lock eyes with the mysteriously-absent waitress before returning to table-reality, fingers tapping against his silverware.

“No, really though,” he said, “it wasn’t ‘a line’, it really did remind me. It just sorta, came out. Sorry if it was weird.”

“It’s fine Steven, I was just kidding around.”

She pretended to look at the menu for a few moments. “So… What was the dream about? Like, in detail.”

“I was on a cruise ship, just pulling into port, and the sky was red in front of me, out to sea—you know how colours are so vivid in dreams? And, it was sunrise but, somehow I knew I was facing west. And it was comforting, like there was no weather, like being surrounded by a weighted blanked that doesn’t suffocate you. I felt the wind but it didn’t make me cold, I smelled that fresh sea smell but I didn’t feel the moisture, right? It was like my brain knew all the best parts of everything and just said, ‘okay, I’ll just keep those and get rid of the other stuff’. I wonder if people always have that power.”

She was looking at him intently, her chin in her hand. “It sounds really beautiful but, how was this a message?”

“Oh, well, we’re going west.”

“Going towards the impossible sunrise?”

“Hm, I didn’t even think of the other interpretation of that…”

She felt like she was reaching across an ocean as she grabbed his hand. “It’s just nice to think that maybe impossible dreams are good sometimes.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I guess?”

\---

“Emily and Zoe [pronounced incorrectly] sittin’ in a tree—”

“It’s morally bankrupt of you to obfuscate the fact that we’re sisters—degenerate, really, though I’m not fond of the term.”

The child in front of them was a younger, more innocent Emily. Though the same in all manners of appearance, Emily Prime couldn’t quite determine whether or not this specimen’s brain was fully in-tact—such as it is, at least.

She tried again. “ _Aunty Sheena_ , you know Aunty Sheena? Raise your hand if you do.”

“Maybe,” began Zoe, “you know, she’s just from so far back in the past, that she doesn’t know anything.”

Emily Prime stroked her chin. “Like a zygote turned human?”

“No, not a goat. Like a baby.”

Emily Beta began slapping her own mouth, creating strange gurgling noises.

Emily Prime looked up at the sky, vapourous images dancing in the clear evening above the island. “I swear to the Roman Candle, this trip could not feel longer.” She approximated a Sign of the Cross.

“Spleeg Spleesh Spleeeeenagaagaaagaaaa—”

“OH, WILL YOU SHUT UP?”

Zoe recoiled in fright. “Please stop it! She doesn’t know what she’s doing!” She took a deep breath, nuzzling her chin. “There’s no need to get so angry…”

Emily took a breath as well. “Okay. We’re almost home. If we can just, keep calm, be cool, be collected for _twenty more minutes_ , everything will be fine.”

The grueling multi-hour walk back to their Kent Island home was almost over. Well, that is, until one driver’s sharp eye sent them on a path Emily knew they could not walk away from.

They were almost to see the light of their porch, feel the warmth of their beds, taste the victorious orange juice of a breakfast fit for true modern pilgrims, when an SUV came to a sudden halt before them. They could not see through its blackened windows, and being delirious from sleep deprivation, they did not immediately recognize it either… The vehicle’s honking startled all three of them. Emily, in a rare showing of overstimulation, plugged her ears and hollered out in simultaneous panic and rage.

“IF YOU’RE GOING TO PUT US AWAY, JUST DO IT ALREADY. I WILL LIVE AND DIE BY MY WORD, YOU COMMUNIST, FASCIST, POLICE STATE EVIL FUCKING—”

Sheena unrolled the driver’s side window as Emily peaked through her shut eyes. “What in the hell are you girls doing out here? Your mother’s worried sick.”

“Sh—Sheena?”

“Aunty?!”

“Habpfffffff cloroplickers!”

Sheena jumped out and hugged them. Zoe was stammering. “I-I—And, we, and—and then—"

“Get in the car, girls, you can explain on the way back home.”

Once inside, Zoe breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately slumped back in her seat. Emily was restless, staring straight ahead at the road which seemed to contract and elongate before her eyes.

She raised a finger. “So, okay, let me perfectly clear, what I am about to say is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: we have uncovered a conspiracy involving alien crop circles, the police, fireworks, and possibly the Australian Latin Society, not sure about that last one. And listen, I am humble, I will not proclaim nor assume I’ve the slightest idea what’n the heckin’ hell is really going on here, but it’s big—oh it’s _so_ big. Big as the nose of the girl who destroyed one of our LOVELY FIELDS, by the way, did you know that happened?”

Pearl turned around nonchalantly. “Oh, right, _that’s_ where I know you girls from.” She waved and smiled like a mother meeting the children of a friend. “Hi!”

Emily’s mouth was agape as her sister drooled and snored in the middle passenger seat. “What is _she_ doing here?!” She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up from the dream she became less and less sure she wasn’t having.

“Oh, uh, Pearl? Hm…” Sheena thought carefully about what she was to say next. “She’s a good friend of mine. I’m just driving her and some of her entourage around as a favour. Sick, right?”

Amethyst’s head popped out from the storage area underneath them, eyes wide and, though her mouth was not visible, obviously smiling. “Hon hon hon,” putting on a cartoonish French accent, “What is zis about, eeh, how do you zay, ‘lovely fields’, ma Perle?”

Pearl’s face turned blue, realizing her mistake. “Oh, uh, well, ahem, I know them from a long time ago, actually.”

“Oh, do your little friends not know, terrorist? Do they not know about your little secret?” Emily said, before doing an even stronger fake accent, with hand gestures: “Zees eez what oui call, eeh, a ‘blackmail’, non?”

“Dirt! Dirt! Dirt!” Amethyst chanted from her cave beneath the seats.

Garnet poked her head out as well. “We’ll discuss this later…” Pearl gulped.

“Sorry to ask you about this,” Sheena said, “but, you haven’t seen two kids around have you? One’s got a star on his shirt? Other’s a girl with short black hair? Ring any bells?”

Emily shook her head. “Only kid we’ve found is this younger version of myself,” she said, as she pointed to Emily Beta, revealing herself to Sheena from behind Pearl’s seat.

“Brrr! Brrrrr! BLAHBLAHGBLAHBLAHGBLAH!”

Sheena slammed on the breaks. “…What the fuck?!”


End file.
